


Fresh on the Block

by catalysticskies



Category: Homestuck
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-24
Updated: 2013-06-24
Packaged: 2017-12-16 00:32:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,611
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/855732
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/catalysticskies/pseuds/catalysticskies
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I was bored one evening and put out for fic recs, and my friends wanted JohnDave, which got about two thousand words out of hand. Hope you guys like it <3 (I couldn't think of a real title)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fresh on the Block

John Egbert is an enigma to you. You meet him on a warm September evening at the start of your maths class, sitting to the side and drawing out some SBAHJ ideas in the back of your book, some lyrics scrawled down the side. You've been hearing things in the corridors and in classes about him, the new guy at school, which for some reason is always an exciting tidbit of news to be passed around. Probably because these guys have nothing better to talk about in their monotonous life, even though they're always talking and talking. Moved down from Washington week previous, apparently, glasses, dark hair, kind of a dork.

Most of that is confirmed when he walks into your classroom, backpack legitimately slung over both shoulders. His eyes sweep over the room on entry, a deep blue that catches your attention instead of the furtive glance you'd given him. His hair's tussled and swept unevenly to the side, bits of it sticking out at carefully awkward angles, like he'd brushed it just so but it still looked stupid. He's dressed in a collared grey-blue linen tee and jeans, his glasses thick black rectangle frames and you're sure he can't see six feet without them. When he opens his mouth to talk to the teacher you catch sight of wires across his teeth.

He's introduced to the class as one “John Egbert, treat him nice kids,” and he looks around for a seat. He's either thick or ignorant, because he chooses one of the numerous empty seats around you, the one directly to your right. He even gives you a slight smile as you watch him take his bag off, slumping down into the chair with little care.

That's the first of little uncertainties that he throws down on you without even knowing he's doing it. They're small, unnoticeable to anyone who isn't paying attention -a smile in the hallway, fleeting glances during class, a casual askance to borrow a textbook from you. You see him with other people sometimes -the kid's good at making friends- so surely he's heard the rumours people spread years ago that make you one of the most avoided people here. Either he's naive enough to continue keeping tabs on you, or he's legitimately curious. You feel kind of bad for him if he's the latter.

Tuesday in the last week of September is when you first hold a real conversation. Autumn has started to rear its ugly head, dark clouds hanging ominously over the whole day until it starts to properly rain early afternoon, pattering on the dark green-brown leaves, raising to something fierce by the time the shrill bell rings out in your last class. You steel yourself for the trudge back to your place, thankful it's only twelve blocks away, but knowing you're going to be soaked and miserable by the time you get there anyway.

You're making your way across the courtyard when you feel someone behind you, and suddenly you're not getting wet anymore. You stop and turn to find none other than Egbert, umbrella in hand and giving you a meek smile. You stare at each other for a moment, and then actually puts out his hand. “John Egbert,” he says evenly, if a little brightly, “but I'm sure you know that. Dave, right?”

You look him over, his hair messier than usual with the moisture filling the air. You take his hand; gentle, yet firm, fingers in all the right places. You get the feeling he's shaken many a hand in his time. “Yeah, Dave Strider. Guess you've heard about me.”

He rolls his eyes with a small 'pfft', dropping his hand, and you thrust yours back into the depths of your pocket. “I've heard loads, but I'm pretty sure most of it's baloney. I doubt you _actually_ had a swordfight with a guy in your first year, that's just ridiculous.”

Oh man, he is totally ignorant. “You'd be surprised,” you mutter with a shrug. That day had been particularly odd, especially since you'd just started high school. You spent half an hour convincing the teachers it was legal because Bro had been insightful enough to use blunt-edged swords, and years after dealing with people still talking about it.

“Probably.” He says this with a slight tone of expectance, like he said it as a jab to get you to say if it's true or not. He pauses, and when you don't, he continues. “You walk home?”

“Yeah.”

“How far? I'm sure my dad can give you a lift if you want, he's always offering people anyway.”

Your eyebrow ticks up a notch before you can really think about it. There's definitely something going on, some ulterior motive he must have to... do something. You think you're maybe just deceiving yourself, and he's just a friendly guy. Who knows. “I'll walk, but thanks.”

A look of disappointment flashes over his face. “You sure? It's raining pretty hard.”

“Sure as a harbour built on a beach taking ships after long months at sea. Sailors are delighted.”

It takes him a second to get that. Enough to stir disdain, but not enough to be at all embarrassing. “Oh! Like 'shore', heh. If you say so then, but mind if I hang around a bit?”

Another notch up. You are now bordering on incredulous instead of curious. “Go ahead.”

He grins at you, all teeth, and you see why he has braces with the buck teeth sticking not even obnoxiously at the forefront of his mouth. He can't have had the wires in long, since they're still prominent, and frankly a little endearing if not entirely dorky. “So what classes are you taking other than Math and Music? And English, obviously, since everyone does that.”

“Photog' and I.T.”

“I.T. huh? I tried coding once, it wasn't really my thing. You definitely seem like a photography guy though, I bet you have a good eye.”

Alright, you'll humour him for a while. “Maybe you'll see some pictures sometime. What about you?”

He mulls this over for a moment, like he has to remember which ones he's doing. You realise after that he probably does have to remember them forcefully, given he's only been around a couple weeks. “I'm taking Biology, and Business and Accounting.”

“Nobody takes B&A seriously unless they're a lawyer.”

“Ugh, I know. My dad insists that everyone should know something about the way it all works before getting a job though, so I still take it. What English are you in?”

“General.”

He makes a slight pout, which is altogether and oddly adorable. “Boring! You never get anything fun in general.”

“What are you taking then, smartass?”

“I'm doing film study.” Huh, that actually sounds mildly interesting. He makes a little 'oh' sound, spotting something behind you, then gives you an almost apologetic smile. “I gotta go, ride's here. Hey, can I give you my handle? You do use Pesterchum right?”

From anyone else the last question would seem at least mildly condescending in any tone or context, but he manages to make it out as an insecure affirmation request, and not the least bit patronising. “Sure,” is all you say, not really in either mind about it but going along anyway. You can always just say you forgot the handle if you never talk to him.

“Okay, hold this a sec,” he mumbles, handing you the umbrella as he fishes around in his pockets. He procures a pen and a torn up timetable, tearing off the corner and shoving the rest back. He leans over to rest the paper on his knee to write, a scrawl much neater than yours, then hands it to you with what is becoming a familiar smile. He put both his handle and phone number on there, which is double what you were expecting from this exchange. You put it in the recesses of your own pocket, moving to hand the umbrella back, but he shakes his head. “Keep it! For now at least. I'll catch you around Dave!”

You watch as he waves, running off to a little white sedan and getting in. You're left standing there with a hand clutched around a tiny slip of paper, another guy's umbrella, and what you hope isn't an actual good impression and following feelings. You decide that John might not be such a bad guy.

* * *

 

\-- turntechGodhead [TG] began pestering ectioBiologist [EB]! --  
TG: so hey  
TG: its dave  
TG: just dropping by to say hi i guess  
EB: hey dave! i was hoping you'd say hi, hehe  
EB: you get home ok?  
TG: yeah  
TG: thanks for that by the way  
EB: no worries, really.  
EB: i hope i wan't too forthcoming or anything, my friend keeps telling me i can be a bit toooo friendly  
EB: but then my sister is too and she's fine, so hey.  
TG: nah  
TG: youre alright  
EB: :)  
EB: so tell me about yourself! what do you like to do?  
TG: i lead a very outlandish life  
TG: prepare your eyes for reading through a long yet still only rough recount of all the daring exploits i perform in my spare time  
EB: consider me prepared!  
TG: ok  
TG: well

* * *

 

Early October comes as something of a turning point. You're in math trying to wrap your head around what the heck is actually going on with an upcoming quiz that actually counts toward the overall grade. You've never been good with numbers -they're always technicalities you don't like to get hung up on- so actually trying to work through them is unnecessarily difficult.

Halfway through the lesson you catch John laughing quietly to himself, doing a piss-poor job of hiding it as you look up at him. Bastard's laughing at you. You narrow your eyes at him, which is pointless with your shades but he gets the point. “You're not very good at this, are you?” he says quietly, grinning at you. He cracks up again as you keep staring at him, finding something hilarious in your misery. “Here, where are you stuck?”

You watch him again for a moment, then let out a slight sigh, looking down at the graph sketchings you'd managed to chew out. “Fuckin' parabolas, how does a matrix even _fit_ in there,” you mumble, sitting back. He shifts his chair over for a look, his deep blue eyes scanning over your work.

“You have to ask them nicely, otherwise they're going to be stubborn and not do what you want. See, here's what you gotta ask...” He starts scrawling out formulas down your margin, explaining it as he goes, and he somehow manages to do it in a way that actually has your attention.

You run out of time in the lesson period, so he offers to tute you some other time before the quiz. You mull this over for a while, then decide hey, why the heck not, and invite him around yours Friday afternoon. He seems emphatic about it, like you just dropped a million dollars on his desk, and his enthusiasm is somewhat infectious -you're feeling pretty good about it too, spending the rest of your afternoon and the day following looking forward to it through the worry of what he's going to think and how well he's going to fare in a house full of arms and various plush paraphernalia.

He takes the half hour walk with you after school, jogging the last part as the skies open up, a light drizzle but enough to leave you dripping wet when you reach your apartment building. You lead him up thirteen flights to the top floor, trailing water down the hallway. You get him a towel and a dry jumper, changing into something dry yourself, then brewing up some hot chocolate before you settle yourselves on the couch. He seems out of place in your house, a spectacled dork from Washington sitting here amongst yours and your brother's accumulated mess of shitty weaponry and what he does for a job.

You're studying all of forty five minutes before you get fed up and bored and throw your textbook onto the floor, at which he laughs and sets the rest of the books gently on some miraculous empty space on the floor with a “Well why don't you show me around?” making you realise you hadn't done that yet. You take him around your apartment, everywhere but your brother's room. He shows legitimate curiosity about your life and what you do, but not invasively so, polite little questions here and there. He has you telling more about your personal life than anyone had ever found out before, even your good friend Rose who you've known for years.

Your bro comes home unexpectedly, and you are definitely not ready to deal with that meeting, so you both abscond to your room for a while. He seems fascinated by your turntables, his hands hovering over them as you sling yourself into your desk chair to watch him. “How long have you been using them?” he asks, moving to sit gently on your bed.

It takes you a second to figure out how long it was, since your brother first introduced you to the art of mixing. “I think I was about five or six when I started getting into it. Been doing it since.”

“Holy crap, that's a while.” He pauses, thinking. “That's about the same time I started piano. I think it's been like... ten or eleven years? Wow.”  
“Jesus, it has been ages. Your dad teach you?”

“Yeah, soon as I was tall enough to play it properly he was on that. I guess your bro taught you?” You nod, leaning back to rest your feet on the edge of your desk. “What's the deal with him, anyway? I mean, if I can ask. Just seems like you don't want me to meet him, is he a weird guy?”

You look at him for a moment, judging his expression and seeing the entire sincerity there. “He's not the kinda guy you can just kick it off with, especially since he'll probably make assumptions. He's pretty out there, y'know?”

“I... guess? I don't know, you're pretty out there too.”

You actually choke out a laugh. “Okay, imagine my humour and demeanour, stunningly fabulous as it is, then times it by about three and a half and throw in some added douchebaggery and bizarre hobbies.”

He laughs a little at that, giving your leg a light punch where he can reach. “I'm sure he isn't _that_ bad. I'd like to meet him sometime!”  
“Maybe some other time dude.”

“That's better than never, so good enough for me.” You almost smile at that, and decide once again that he's not so bad. You might even like him a little.

* * *

 

His house is extremely different. He invites you over a week or so later, giving you the address (you insisted going on a weekend -you didn't want an awkward car trip with his dad) and buzzing with nervous excitement by Friday. You're more nervous than excited, that familiar sick feeling settling in your gut as you catch the bus there late Saturday morning. The mid-October chill has started to set in, your breath fogging in the air as you walk from the stop, tracking down his house. You find it to be a small, unassuming suburban house, and you hadn't really expected anything otherwise.

John answers the door when you knock, showing you in and giving you a rundown of the place. “My dad's out shopping,” he says as he stops in the kitchen, “so make yourself at home. Juice?”

After a glass of some weird conglomerate of fruits (“breakfast juice”, the bottle said, so who knew what the hell was in it) he manages to convince you to watch a movie with him. Movies aren't typically your thing, but if a dork really wants you to, you decide that one couldn't hurt.

That one movie does, in fact, hurt to watch, mostly from your aching sides as you laugh at all the corny lines and poor acting. John legitimately likes Con Air, which is horribly disappointing, and he hisses little things to you as you crack up; “shh Dave you're missing the best part,” “shut up, his face isn't that funny!”, “come on that line was movie _gold_ ,” but by the end he's laughing with you, the two of you quoting lines in fakest monotone straight-face you can manage all through the credits.

He takes you up to his room afterwards, showing you his music and his movie posters (you're glad he doesn't do the thing where he kisses the posters) and a few of his games. You chew him out about his copy of the shittiest Ghostbusters game on the planet, which he's honestly embarrassed about, but he says he keeps it for sentimental reasons since he and his sister would sometimes play it when they were kids.

He puts on some music and you hang out and talk, him slouching in his desk chair while you lie across his bed to stare at the roof as you chat about anything and everything. At one point he stops, a thoughtful silence stretching between you. “Dave?”

“Yeah?”

“Do you like me?”

The question catches you off guard, and you're not sure how to answer it. You turn your head to look at him, visibly nervous. “Well yeah, you're a pretty cool guy. Pretty lovable too, just one of those guys everyone likes.”

He chews at his lip with his oversized teeth, not looking at you. “No, I mean... Do you _like_ me?”

“Oh.” You sit there blankly for a second, then sit up, looking at the floor at the end of his bed. Do you like him? You honestly aren't sure if you like him like that. Heck, you aren't even sure if you're gay, you never sorted that out and left it ambiguous in your head. He watches you expectantly, his deep blue eyes on you as he waits. When you speak it is very slowly, careful of every word coming out. “Are you asking because you like me?”

“Umm. Well if I say yes or no, will that influence your answer?” Well played, he knows how to work this.

“No, I'm just curious as to why you're asking.”

He takes a deep, slow breath, letting it out in a sigh. “Then yeah, I'm asking because I like you.”

You should have seen it coming, with the way he looks at you, how he talks to you. You look at him, sitting there a little agitatedly, tense and uncertain, and you smile. “Well, I only put out after a date, so you better show me a good time, Egbert.”

He gives you the biggest smile you've ever seen.

* * *

 

The following Saturday finds you at a cinema mid-evening, dressed in one of your decent pairs of jeans, your favourite shirt (white with red sleeves, a broken record logo on the centre) with a simple maroon hoodie over the top, and your favourite trench coat shadowing over the top. John is a little more carefully dressed, dark jeans with a simple dark-grey sweater over his white linen shirt, a black jacket hung around his arm as he runs up to meet you with a hearty “Hi Dave!”

He manages to pick a movie that doesn't entirely suck, one you actually kind of enjoy, something with aliens and a lot of gunfire and exploding guts and people making out and having gross alien babies burst out of their stomachs afterwards. At some point during the movie you end up with his hand twined in yours between you.

You find a pizzeria in the mall where the cinema is and eat there for dinner, going halves on a meatlovers and getting two of those cakes with the gooey melted chocolate on the inside for dessert. He can't help commenting on the wrongness of the texture of the cake, having grown up in a family of bakers, so you just tell him to cram it because you're paying for it, and shove a spoonful in his mouth, which mostly ends up as crumbled bits on the table and wet pieces of regurgitated food as he chokes on it laughing.

The walk between the mall and your house is only short, but the late autumn night is cold and unforgiving as you stroll through the dark. He complains that you should have gotten a taxi, but you just hook your arm around his shoulders and bribe him with promises of hot drinks, which leads him on easily.  
You're both freezing when you finally get back to your place, dumping your jackets on the couch and just deciding you'd camp out in bed. You flick the heater on as he passes through to your room, an idea dropping easily into your head as you follow him. You've played with the idea before, but now that it's possible you have a moment of nervous reluctance, then decide hell yes, you're gonna do this.

He's fumbling around in the doorway to your room, patting at the walls when you get there. “Dave I can't find your light switch, where _is_ the bloody thing--”

“John.” He stops, his glasses catching the light from the kitchen as he looks at you. “I don't think that'll be necessary.”

You step forward and your lips meet his, warm and sweet and fitting perfectly together, and it's only a brief moment of hesitation before his hands are in your hair and he's kissing you back.


End file.
